A service called virtual appliance (VA) is utilized in a situation in which an infrastructural environment of a service for providing a cloud or a virtual environment is diversified. Further, a virtual machine image that is applied to a virtual machine is created from a template of a VA. The template of the VA may be regarded also as metadata including a condition (designation condition) for each use environment of a virtual machine such as a package, operating system (OS) setting, or a driver. The metadata designates a virtual machine image executed in a virtual machine and an execution environment and an execution condition of a virtual machine image.
Although the substance of the VA differs for each use environment of the virtual machine, it is not realistic for a provider of a service to manually create a VA for each use environment. Therefore, a technology has been proposed which uses a template including the substance of the VA prepared in accordance with a service to support creation of a VA according to each use environment. Further, also a technology has been proposed which improves the efficiency in creation or distribution of a virtual machine image to be applied to creation of a VA or a virtual machine.
Related technologies are disclosed in, for example, International Publication Pamphlet No. WO 2009/098909, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2011-070627, and Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2015-046159.
There is the possibility that selection of a driver to be included in a VA or the like may not be performed correctly in the absence of technical knowledge relating to hardware in a use environment of a virtual machine. Therefore, there is the possibility that, when the creator of the VA changes the substance of the VA in accordance with the use environment, the change may not match a dependency relationship with the different substance of the VA. As a result, there is the possibility that, even if a virtual machine image created from the VA is used on the virtual machine, the virtual machine may not operate correctly.
Also it is common to restrict the substance of a VA that may be changed to a creator of a VA upon creation of a VA. However, in this case, there is the possibility that the created VA may include the substance that is not recognized by the creator of the VA. Further, when the virtual machine does not operate correctly because of the substance of the VA that is not recognized by the creator of the VA, the problem is turned out at a stage at which a virtual machine image created from the VA is applied to a virtual machine. For example, it is difficult for the creator of the VA to recognize the problem upon creation of the VA.